Danielle Steel - Changes

And with special thanks to Dr. Phillip Oyer

Dr. Hallam Dr. Peter Hallam Dr. Hallam Cardiac Intensive, Dr. Hallam The voice droned on mechanically as Peter Hallam sped through the lobby of Center City Hospital, never stopping to answer the page since the team already knew he was on his way. He furrowed his brow as he pressed six, his mind already totally engaged with the data he had been given twenty minutes before on the phone. They had waited weeks for this donor, and it was almost too late. Almost. His mind raced as the elevator doors ground open, and he walked quickly to the nurses' station marked Cardiac Intensive Care.

Have they sent Sally Block upstairs yet? A nurse looked up, seeming to snap to attention as her eyes met his. Something inside her always leapt a little when she saw him. There was something infinitely impressive about the man, tall, slender, gray-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken. He had the looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels. There was something so basically kind and gentle about him, and yet something powerful as well. The aura of a highly trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther to do more to fight time to conquer odds beyond hope to steal back just one life one man one woman one child one more. And often he won. Often. But not always. And that irked him. More than that, it pained him. It was the cause for the lines beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him. It wasn't enough that he wrought miracles almost daily. He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save them all, and there was no way he could.

Yes, Doctor. The nurse nodded quickly. She just went up.

Was she ready? That was the other thing about him and the nurse marveled at the question. She knew instantly what he meant by ready"; not the I.V. in the patient's arm, or the mild sedative administered before she left her room to be wheeled to surgery. He was questioning what she was thinking, feeling, who had spoken to her, who went with her. He wanted each of them to know what they were facing, how hard the team would work, how much they cared, how desperately they would all try to save each life. He wanted each patient to be ready to enter the battle with him. If they don't believe they have a fighting chance when they go in there, we've lost them right from the beginning, the nurse had heard him tell his students, and he meant it. He fought with every fiber of his being, and it cost him, but it was worth it. The results he'd gotten in the past five years were amazing, with few exceptions. Exceptions which mattered deeply to Peter Hallam. Everything did. He was remarkable and intense and brilliant and so goddamn handsome, the nurse reminded herself with a smile as he hurried past her to a small elevator in the corridor behind her. It sped up one floor and deposited him outside the operating rooms where he and his team performed bypasses and transplants and occasionally more ordinary cardiac surgery, but not often. Most of the time, Peter Hallam and his team did the big stuff, as they would tonight.

Sally Block was a twenty-two-year-old girl who had lived most of her adult life as an invalid, crippled by rheumatic fever as a child, and she had suffered through multiple valve replacements and a decade of medication. He and his associates had agreed weeks before when she'd been admitted to Center City that a transplant was the only answer for her. But thus far, there had been no donor. Until tonight, at two thirty in the morning, when a group of juvenile delinquents had engaged in their own private drag races in the San Fernando Valley; three of them had died on impact, and after a series of businesslike phone calls from the splendidly run organization for the location and placement of donors, Peter Hallam knew he had a good one. He had had calls out to every hospital in Southern California for a donor for Sally, and now they had oneif Sally could just survive the surgery, and her body didn't sabotage them by rejecting the new heart they gave her.

He peeled off his street clothes without ceremony, donned the limp green cotton surgery pajamas, scrubbed intensely, and was gowned and masked by surgical assistants. Three other doctors and two residents did likewise as did a fleet of nurses. But Peter Hallam seemed not even to see them, as he walked into the operating room. His eyes immediately sought Sally, lying silent and still on the operating-room table, her own eyes seemingly mesmerized by the bright lights above her. Even lying there in the sterile garb with her long blond hair tucked into a green cotton cap she looked pretty. She was not only a beautiful young woman but a decent human being as well. She wanted desperately to be an artist to go to college to go to a prom to be kissed to have babies She recognized him even with the cap and mask and she smiled sleepily through a haze of medication.

Hi. She looked frail, her eyes enormous in the fragile face, like a broken china doll, waiting for him to repair her.

Hello, Sally. How're you feeling?

Funny. Her eyes fluttered for a moment and she smiled at the familiar eyes. She had come to know him in the last few weeks, better than she had known anyone in years. He had opened doors of hope for her, of tenderness, and of caring, and the loneliness and isolation she had felt for years had finally seemed less acute to her.

We're going to be pretty busy for the next few hours. All you have to do is lie there and snooze. He watched her and glanced at the monitors nearby before looking back at her again. Scared?

Sort of. But he knew she was well prepared. He had spent weeks explaining the surgery to her, the intricate process, and the dangers and medications afterward. She knew what to expect now, and their big moment had come. It was almost like giving birth. And he would be giving birth to her, almost as though she would spring from his very soul, from his fingertips as they fought to save her.

The anesthetist moved closer to her head and searched Peter Hallam's eyes. He nodded slowly and smiled at Sally again. See you in a little while. Except it wouldn't be a little while. It would be more like five or six hours before she was conscious again, and then only barely, as they watched her in the recovery room, before moving her to intensive care.